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T.O. council seeks to make marijuana business selection process more fair and competitive

To date, Thousand Oaks has approved only two proposed locations submitted by applicants who want to operate a medical marijuana dispensary in an industrial part of town.

Since the application period opened Feb. 13, four other proposed sites have been denied for not meeting the location requirements of the city’s cannabisordinance.

“With only two potential locations identified, there is concern by staff that this might hinder a fair and competitive process by limiting the number of qualified applicants,” stated a report from city Finance Director John Adams to City Manager Andrew Powers for this week’s Thousand Oaks City Council meeting.

In response, the council, at the recommendation of its staff, on Tuesday night modified the application procedure in an attempt to spur more qualified applicants and thus make the cannabis business selection process fairer and more competitive.

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The council decided that applicants can now attempt to get their proposed locations approved by the city after they file their initial business applications, rather than — as had been required — before they filed them.

In light of the procedural change, the city has extended the deadline for applications from March 8 to March 30. Location certification requests can now be submitted from April 6 to May 10.

“The idea is to allow applicants to go ahead and submit their application first, get their location certified second, and extend the deadline 22 days from the 8th to the 30th,” Mark Towne, the city’s community development director, said in an interview after the council’s meeting.

“And thus, provide a more fair and competitive process through a larger application pool,” he said.

To date, 12 location certification requests have been filed for six locations, said Marjan Behzadi, Thousand Oaks community development operations manager. Five requests have been approved for two locations, she said. Seven have been denied for four other locations, she said. In some instances, multiple parties have filed the requests for the same location.

Proposed locations for the medical marijuana dispensary must be in an industrial park-zoned part of town and must be at least 600 feet from so-called “sensitive uses”: schools, youth facilities, day-care facilities and residential neighborhoods.

The city is also allowing applications for a marijuana testing facility, also in an industrial part of town with a minimum 600-foot buffer, but thus far hasn’t received any, Towne said.

Of the four locations denied by the city, some of them “meet the intent of the (cannabis) ordinance ... (but) do not meet the letter of the ordinance,” Adams wrote in his staff report.

For instance, one of the locations is within 600 feet of a sensitive use, but that sensitive use is on the other side of a freeway with no direct passage between the two properties, he wrote. Another is within 600 feet of a property that is residentially zoned, but the site is actually a homeowners’ association-owned greenbelt/fuel modification lot, he wrote.

“Due to the limited number of viable locations ... staff has concluded that there is a reasonable need to adjust the distance requirements between potential cannabis business locations and sensitive uses in order to provide the broadest pool of applicants possible in an effort to ensure a competitive selection process,” he wrote.

An amendment to the city’s cannabis ordinance “to address cannabis business location/buffer issues” is scheduled to be introduced at the council’s April 10 meeting, Adams wrote.

At the conclusion of a thorough, four-phase selection process, the council in July hopes to approve an operator for the medical marijuana dispensary, and one for the marijuana testing facility, if the city receives any applications to run one.

The California Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2016, established state licensing for the commercial cultivation, manufacture, retail sale, transport, distribution, delivery and testing of medical marijuana. But it’s up to local jurisdictions to decide whether to allow or ban medical marijuana dispensaries within their borders.

Under Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act that was approved by California voters in the Nov. 6, 2016, general election, all products sold at medical marijuana or recreational marijuana dispensaries must be tested for quality control at a state-licensed laboratory starting this year.